


And on the seventh...

by Dorinda



Category: Master and Commander - All Media Types, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
Genre: Angst, Birds, Christmas, Desert Island, First Aid, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Overworking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-14 22:31:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13017516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorinda/pseuds/Dorinda
Summary: This decision might be considered the luckiest, as standing near Jack meant that Stephen was not alone in his fall overboard.Or it might be considered the unluckiest, as standing near Jack meant that Stephen was foremost in the splinters' path, when the ranging shot abruptly found its range.





	And on the seventh...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kohaku1977](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kohaku1977/gifts).



The French ship opened fire far too early. Stephen was no expert, but even he could see that. The cannonballs had little hope even of splashing water onto _Surprise_ 's hind end; they merely skipped across the warm green sea and sank.

He remarked upon this to Jack, who looked pained for some reason. "Yes, well. I'd agree with you, Doctor, as long as you allow for a stern rather than a hind end."

"Is it not therefore a waste of good ammunition?"

"Certainly," said Jack. "The more he flings about, the better we like it. Don't we, Tom?"

Mr. Pullings, who was passing by with the gunner, stopped long enough to touch his hat and grin. "Oh yes, sir."

Jack grinned back, both of them mirroring each other's fierce martial excitement, and then Pullings went on his way. Stephen, however, still considered the distant ship.

"And yet," he said, "everything else he has done during this chase has seemed quite canny. Could he be a fool?"

"I wouldn't say a fool," answered Jack, looking uncomfortable. "A bit quick on the trigger, perhaps."

"But he can see that none of his shots are striking us," insisted Stephen. "Whatever can he be about, with this useless frippery?" 

"It isn't precisely useless, I must admit," said Jack, and squinted carefully at the next cannon blast from their pursuer. "We call it ranging shot. You're testing the range, d'you see, the distance. How much powder, how much elevation."

"Ah," said Stephen, and watched the splash of the ball with more respect. "Calibrating his instruments."

"Yes," said Jack. He looked up at the _Surprise_ 's sails, and Stephen could practically see the trigonometrical functions spinning out from his brow. 

"Which we cannot do in turn, having no guns at the hind— at the tail. The stern."

Jack eyed him at that cascade of terms, and relented. "No. Nor have we the powder and shot to burn."

Which meant: _but the Frenchman has_. Stephen well knew that _Surprise_ herself had very little of anything in comparison, here in the middle of a long, risky voyage across the Indian Ocean where the French were battling the Dutch for possession of Java.

"Ah well," said Stephen philosophically. "When it is time for the battle, at least this testing and trying will be over. And I don't suppose a ranging shot _per se_ has ever done much of note."

"You wouldn't think so, would you," Jack muttered. He looked carefully at certain spots in the rigging, as if he were reading messages written in the ropes.

"Would I be wrong, then?"

Jack's jaw worked slightly. Stephen didn't think he was going to speak again, until he suddenly said in a low, tight voice, "Well...once on the old _Agamemnon_ , this privateer was nipping at our heels. Hours, this went on. And the quartermaster made some joke or other about it. Next moment, he's dead as a fish, his head knocked through. The wheel spun loose, got tangled—one of his arms caught in the spokes, you see. We lost our steerage way and had a damned hard fight."

"I am sorry to hear it," said Stephen.

Jack leaned toward him, pitching his voice even more quietly. "I found out later that that particular quartermaster was a Finn."

Stephen wondered if he was supposed to be sorry to hear that, too. But the Finns of his acquaintance did not deserve such a statement.

"Had we time," he said instead, "I would suggest putting the midshipmen to work on their mathematics, as they observe the parabolic flight of the balls. I cannot see that they are doing themselves much good in flinging themselves up and down the deck shouting at people." One of said midshipmen in fact was trotting past at that very moment, giving orders to his gun crew in an adolescent squeak. 

Jack smiled at this blethering, as Stephen had meant him to. "Very instructive, I'm sure," he said, and watched another French shot arc high and splash.

Stephen went back down to the cockpit. But it had been waiting ready all this long chase, and now Padeen was whiling away his time re-sharpening the saws and catlings to a shaving edge. Stephen would almost have secreted himself somewhere with enough light to read a book, if it had been easier to get to his sea chest. 

And so, Stephen returned to the quarterdeck; not to bother Jack, but to stand near him, and watch him watching the ranging shots. He would know when it was time to go below.

* * *

This decision might be considered the luckiest, as standing near Jack meant that Stephen was not alone in his fall overboard.

Or it might be considered the unluckiest, as standing near Jack meant that Stephen was foremost in the splinters' path, when the ranging shot abruptly found its range.

Stephen himself had no time to consider it anything at all. One moment he was bracing himself against the heel of the deck as _Surprise_ turned or tacked or luffed or some such thing. And the next moment, a French cannonball flew on the uproll, ricocheted crazily off a sudden rising swell, and smashed through the taffrail and across the quarterdeck.

Shattering wood sprayed through the air. Stephen felt it as red-hot slashes on his legs, knocking him across the tilting deck, and he was stumbling, careering, his arms windmilling for balance he could not find.

He was falling. It was a long way from quarterdeck to sea, and though by now he could dive when he put his mind to it—especially if Jack had gone first to remind him how—right now all he managed was to watch the spinning world of water and sky and water, pulling him down, striking him like a hammer.

* * *

Jack's mouth was on his, which is how Stephen knew he was dreaming. No comfortable sensual dream, however. Jack was indeed holding him close, but too tight, and with his head tilted awkwardly back. And Jack's mouth was hard, his jaw wide and crushing upon him.

Stephen meant to object, but he couldn't draw a breath. Jack withdrew the pressure only long enough to spit and gasp, then descended again.

Perhaps next time the dream could be gentler.

* * *

Stephen woke on his side, retching up thick water, grit between his teeth and in his nose. 

Jack was crouching over him, drenched and dripping, his hair plastered wet against his head. "Better out than in," he said, and patted Stephen's shoulder.

Stephen would have agreed, had he been able to speak. For the moment he concentrated on carefully breathing in between coughs. 

He felt dizzy and strange. The deck no longer had its accustomed sway. And as he blinked salt water from his eyes, he could see that he lay not on the holystoned boards, but on a stretch of wet sand.

"I'll be quite the laughing-stock," Jack said. "The captain who went overboard right before the battle."

Stephen could only cough, but Jack seemed to expect no response. He settled cross-legged by Stephen and started picking seaweed off him, occasionally thumping his back to help the water come out.

"The ship?" Stephen managed after a while.

"Listen," Jack said, lifting his chin and gazing at the sky. 

That was a bit difficult, lying down as he was with his head on Jack's rolled coat. Stephen struggled to sit up, and at once Jack had hold of him, easing him upright. Curling into a sitting position hurt very much, and he noticed for the first time that two neckcloths were tied around his leg, one just below the knee, one just above it. Both were heavily stained with blood.

Between coughs, Stephen heard it: far in the distance, the single boom of the French gun, like fading thunder.

"If we was higher up we might even see 'em." Jack reached for the side of Stephen's head and removed a strand of dark green weed. "Tom will send a boat as soon as it's practical."

It was hard for Stephen to imagine, a boat and crew launched right in the teeth of the enemy during a chase. He began, dubiously, "If they—", but Jack spoke right over him.

"In the meantime, I'd better get up a roof of some sort. Christmastime is still monsoon season, you know." He smiled at Stephen, who of course knew very well; _Surprise_ had endured the heavy hot rains most afternoons, to the habitual complaints of the ship's ragtag Christmas choir trying to get their practice in.

"Do you know where we are?" Stephen asked, looking at the thick jungle running down almost to the shoreline.

Jack scrambled to his feet. "Nothing on the chart," he said. "I would have stopped to take proper soundings, were it not for that blasted Frenchman. So many islands around here, you'd think it's where the good Lord scattered all his leftovers."

"It's certainly where Bonaparte has been scattering his navy," Stephen said wryly. "Now that they fight so hard to take Java."

"Tosh!" Jack said. "They have enough to do with Java proper without wasting their time on little clumps like this." He rolled up his wet sleeves and strode for the interior. "I'll be back. And don't worry!"

Stephen in fact did not worry, not with Jack here, so cheerful and calm. In matters of seamanship and so forth he trusted Jack entirely. And so Stephen turned his attention to his leg, unwrapping the splinter wounds and examining them one by one just as he would with any of his patients. The pain was a useful additional diagnostic.

* * *

"We're rather well set up here," Jack said, the third time he returned with scratches up his forearms and a huge heap of branches. "Had we the time, I'd almost set the crew ashore for an afternoon's leave while we restocked the ship. I saw some fruit in the trees, and the monsoon will bring us all the fresh water we could want."

He ran with moisture as he energetically plaited the branches together, both the seawater still in his clothes and sweat from the humid heat. Stephen knew they would be needing that fresh water soon.

"Now, Stephen," Jack said at last, bending over before him. "Shall we move you into your new house?"

He was as gentle as could be, lifting Stephen bodily into his arms and carrying him into the shelter, smiling as he arranged him on a cunning mat he had woven from soft green fronds, showing no sign of strain. Stephen still felt rather unwell, even from such a simple move.

"These splinters will need extraction," he said after a fresh bout of coughing. "They will do better on board."

"Yes," said Jack, with that brightly nervous look he got at any approach to discussing surgery. "Well...should you wish to see to them sooner, Stephen, I mean if there should be any delay in the boat... You know I am your man."

"Of course," Stephen answered gravely. He was glad the woven mat was soft; were Jack by some chance to feel faint, at least he would not hit his head.

* * *

The afternoon rains came as expected, rolling in from the sea, washing down in warm gray sheets. The roof was startlingly good at diverting the rainfall down the slope of overlapping branches, to where Jack had laid out a few scavenged coconut husks to catch the fresh water.

Stephen sipped his share in between coughs, watching Jack weaving something new—from dried fronds, this time. Jack whistled softly over his work, his hair, loose from its queue, hanging over his shoulders.

"Dare I ask what it is?" Stephen said at last.

Jack, in answer, swung the sheet of fronds up between them.

"Screen," came his chipper voice. He lowered it. "For the privy I'll dig right between those trees. Using the dry stuff means it can stand up straight, make a nice little cubby."

"You have your very own private seat on the ship," Stephen said. "What's amiss, have you eaten something you shouldn't?"

"No need to doctor me, Doctor," Jack said with a smile. "One patient is enough."

"I cannot doctor myself properly in this rain and without my tools," Stephen said with some acerbity. "And shortly I will even lose the last of the light. The sooner we are back where we belong, the better."

"Well," said Jack, bending to his screenwork, "I shouldn't be surprised if it takes them a little while... Losing those Frogs, after all, and then beating back against the monsoon." He tugged another row of plaits tight, then peered up. "Are the splinters quite bad, Stephen?"

"No." Stephen glared at the neckcloth-bandages, grown stiff and dark with blood. "But with the purulence from leaving them in too long, the delay in stitching which hampers the process of healing by first intention, these will be...troublesome." 

"Ah," said Jack.

Stephen drew up his sound leg and rested his forehead on his knee, listening to the steady rush of the rain and the wheeze of his own inhales.

* * *

When Stephen emerged—he couldn't call it waking, but he had been in a daze for some time—Jack had gone, and so had the rain. The finished screen was rolled neatly on Jack's side of the shelter; folded atop it were Jack's clothes, every stitch, down to drawers and stockings.

Stephen blinked. 

Well, not every stitch, he supposed: his neckcloth was still around Stephen's thigh, and the rolled coat was on Stephen's side of the shelter as a pillow, should his cough ease enough to let him lie down flat. But otherwise...

A sudden series of splashes made him look toward the sea. And striding from the water was Jack Aubrey, mother-naked but for his gold-buckled shoes. The tropical sun had had plenty of time on their voyage to toast him a sandy bronze, with that paler English pink at loin and buttock despite his time swimming with Stephen. His heavy muscular frame glittered in shafts of sun between the departing monsoon clouds. His hair streamed upon his shoulders and in his eyes. 

Stephen, still half-dazed, fogged with pain and heat and sleep, thought, _And Nerites was beloved of Poseidon and loved him in return, serving as his charioteer over the waves_...

Jack noticed him and smiled, gesturing with something in his hand. "See what I've made you!" he called.

Stephen watched him approach. Jack slicked his hair back; seawater clung to him all over like another skin.

"Here," said Jack at last, kneeling by him in complete unselfconsciousness. He retrieved two seashells from his piled belongings, then handed one carefully to Stephen. 

"This was my first try. Scraping a good edge on a rock, d'you see? Shell sharpens up like a razor if you're careful. Might not have quite enough handle, though. Now this one, it's much better. Good grip for the hand, and I honed the edge all round the curve at the front. Nicer angle, if I do say so."

He lifted the shell he'd just carried in with him, still dripping wet. "And this fellow's good and thick; I can make him into something for me. A nice pocketknife." His eyes shone. "Not that I have any pockets for it at present, ha ha."

"No," Stephen agreed, turning the second shell over and over in his hands. "So this one is for me?"

"It's no lancet," Jack said, looking at Stephen's wounded leg and then away. "But I thought we ought to see to those splinters if we can. Before the light quite leaves us." 

"Hmm." Stephen fitted the body of the shell into his palm, laid his forefinger along it to brace and guide. 

"They can't approach the land at night," Jack said. "Nor send a boat. The moon's waning fast; she'll be dark by Christmas."

"I see," said Stephen.

He looked up from the beautiful knife, which already felt like a part of his hand. Jack's smile was anxious.

"Let us to it, then," Stephen said. "We shall see if I can break your record for actual mass of extracted wood. I remember one chunk I took from your left shoulder that felt large enough to make a smoking-pipe."

Jack brightened. The memory of injuries gone by and turned to jokes seemed to hearten him. "You said I could present it to the Admiral, with his name carved on. As a memento."

"I said as a farewell gift," Stephen corrected. "Given that he would surely have had you thrown from the porthole at once."

They looked at each other, smiling. Times had been worse than this, far worse. And here they still were.

* * *

Jack of course was no doctor, but his skills as an orderly were undeniable. When Stephen set to work it was in an operating theatre as tidy and organized as the island could possibly have provided: both shell-knives washed and laid out on the mat, coconut-husk containers of fresh and salt water, Jack's handkerchief ready for wiping and blotting, both neckcloths rinsed and wrung as best they could be in seawater and rainwater, draped ready to hand for rebandaging. Jack—who had donned both breeches and shirt, with some sense of occasion—had even rapidly carved a cleft stick as a sort of forceps, though Stephen intended to use his hands.

Jack finished by helping Stephen from his stained and tattered breeches, leaving the wounds bare below the hem of his drawers. 

"I'm sorry there's no wine, Stephen," Jack said. "Nor rum."

Stephen scoffed. "If this takes me long enough to need anything of that kind, I'll know I am in the wrong profession. Now, hand me that knife."

It was not that the extractions were not painful. But the pain served a useful function, as it had before, guiding his fingertips to hidden pieces of splinter. He breathed through his nose, waited for the occasional cough to pass, and cut down carefully to each fragment. 

Now and then he glanced at Jack, who was doing his best, though his face had gone as grey-white and shiny as a gutted fish. At last, Stephen said,

"I'm afraid that is nowhere near enough salt water. Refill it, if you please." 

Jack seized the husk and scrambled for the surf line. As soon as he was gone, Stephen quickly cut the last and greatest splinter free. He probed the wound with his fingers, ensuring he had left no jagged bits behind. 

When Jack returned, Stephen had already rinsed the wounds with fresh water. Now he took the seawater and did the same, then pressed the handkerchief firmly to his thigh. 

"Shall I bandage?" asked Jack stoutly.

"Yes," Stephen said, suddenly feeling very tired. 

He lay back with his head on the coat and closed his eyes. Jack's touch was careful and quick, tying the neckcloths back in place. 

"There you are," he said. "You can rest now."

Stephen's leg throbbed with the fresh wounds, and his chest still ached from breathing water. The setting sun boiled the wet air until it draped over his face and body like a hot blanket. He would never sleep.

A puff of moving air brushed his face. And another. He managed to open his eyes just enough to see Jack sitting calmly by him, holding a broad leaf Stephen didn't recognize. He was fanning it up and down with small, easy movements of his wrist, barely expending energy, looking alertly out to sea.

Stephen's eyes closed. Jack was on watch. 

He slept.

* * *

Stephen could not face the coconut meat Jack offered him next morning, nor the liquid from inside the shell. He drank warm rainwater with a splash of seawater added to counteract the sweating, and waved Jack away.

Jack, however, hardly needed telling. Stephen had perhaps expected him to loom nearby staring at the seeping bandages with furrowed brow, but he did not. Instead he ran about the island, crashing through the brush, reappearing with various supplies for his eternal spate of handiwork.

The shelter's drainage was improved, the mat and roof thickened, more empty husks in place to catch fresh water before the afternoon rains came. The privy, when Stephen did eventually have to visit it—supported there by Jack but then mercifully left alone—was practically a house of its own, with amenities. Jack made a primitive axe from a flaked stone, and he worked naked on the beach building a signal tower. Palm fronds waved from the very top of the scaffolding like a flag.

Stephen woke and dozed, monitored the rise of the expected fever, and considered the bandage on his thigh, red and wet. 

At midday, Jack, clad in breeches and shoes, finally returned to Stephen's side. "Here, then. Try these—no coconut, I promise you."

He unwrapped his shirt, bundled around a load of various fruits.

Stephen took up his seashell knife, which Jack had scrubbed clean at tiresome length. He selected a round, scaly brown object perhaps the size of a coconut, and sliced into the flesh to examine one of the wrinkled seeds. A good specimen; he wished he could keep it.

"Well?" Jack asked.

"I can't remember the name," Stephen said. "But I do not suggest you eat it."

"That bad?" 

"Native peoples grind the seeds for rat poison."

"Do they, by God." Jack hastily seized it.

"The seeds can however be made edible by boiling, then soaking in a pit for, I believe, forty days."

"Splendid." Jack flung the object into the jungle, scrubbing his hands on the sand afterward.

Stephen picked up one of the smaller fruits, a red hairy object that made his mouth water.

"Here," he said, handing it to Jack. As Jack lifted it to bite, Stephen added, "Perhaps best to shake the ants off first, although they are nutritious in the aggregate. The seed inside is poisonous."

"Whole Goddamn place wants to kill us," said Jack, eyeing the rambutan with respect. He peeled and ate it according to instructions, and Stephen poked among the rest of the catch. 

"Finish the rest of those now, they won't keep," said Stephen at last. "These others are varieties of mango, and will still be good in the morning. If we're still here."

"Not much longer," said Jack around another mouthful. He spent the next little while chivvying Stephen into eating his share; which, Stephen had to admit, went down well.

* * *

"Do you remember where you found these?" Stephen said eventually, holding up one of the rambutans.

"Of course," said Jack, wiping his mouth on his arm. "Don't tell me it turns out they're poisonous all through."

"Certainly not. I only need you to bring me a handful of the roots."

"Are they good to eat?"

"In a sense. And Jack?"

Jack had already left the shelter; he turned to listen, walking backward toward the jungle.

"Will you bring me some thorns, if you happen to come upon any that will suit."

"Thorns," Jack repeated.

Stephen did not answer the question beneath his tone. "As long and as sturdy as possible. Half a dozen would do; ten would allow for breakage and error. If there are none—and with my experience of the jungles of this region, I find that highly unlikely—I will ask you to make me some."

He watched Jack stride away on his errand, the skin of his bare back patchily-flushed with heat and effort. Jack moved with energy and purpose, his head up, for all the world as if he had just finished one of their leisurely breakfasts and was off to the topmain. Or maincross, or foremain, or whatever he called his various inexplicable places high on the masts. That would be the first sight of the ship, when she returned. 

Stephen counted his pulse and watched the horizon over the sea.

* * *

"Like this?" Jack tipped the coconut husk toward Stephen to show him the slurry of pounded root and water.

"It will do. Let it steep in the sun." 

Jack returned from setting the concoction on a patch of hot, bright sand. He ignored the fresh blood soaking through the thigh bandage with a bluff show of unconcern. "Looks like muck. Is it to wash the wound?"

"It is for me to drink," Stephen said. "Rambutan roots are a known febrifuge."

He felt a small, cruel triumph in Jack's puzzlement, like a dog tipping its head to one side and the other. This for your topmains, he thought.

But in a moment, he relented: "To treat fever."

"Have you a fever? You never said."

"Of course I do."

"Is the cough from the fever?"

"The cough is from the drowning," Stephen said. "Inhaling water can in a sense bruise the lungs. You remember Gallagher?"

"I remember how much he drank," said Jack regretfully. "That man was a perfect maniac for falling overboard. But I thought he died of...pneumonia, was it?"

"It was. But it was his fall overboard several days before that brought it on," said Stephen. "His lungs never did recover."

He couldn't help but cough at that point, and he shook his head impatiently when Jack tried to offer him some water.

At last, his breathing steady, Stephen unwrapped his thigh. Jack watched him select the longest thorns and lay them in a row. But he did not ask any questions about them, and Stephen could tell he had realized what they were for.

"Shall I do it," Jack offered at last. The effort hardly showed, and Stephen's heart clenched in his chest despite his feverish irritability and the pain in his leg. "You know I stitch a fine seam." 

"This is not stitching. It is pinning."

"I always pin my seams first. It keeps the line straight no matter how the deck may roll."

Stephen looked up. Jack was pale but earnest, new scratches standing out like scourge marks on his arms and chest. 

"I appreciate your hand with a garment," Stephen said gently. "But leave this to me."

Jack's distress at feeling relieved was too plain; Stephen made sure to busy himself bundling up the bandage and handkerchief. "Will you see what you can do with these?"

Without a word, Jack took the sodden cloths and left for the sea.

Stephen breathed in, and carefully pinned the deepest cut together, at the spot where the edges refused to meet close enough to heal. He only needed four thorns. 

It still left him exhausted. He let Jack bandage him. One could wish for anything on this island to be dry—not even linen hung in the sun ever quite lost its damp.

He pressed his head into the rolled coat. It still held the faint warm scent of Jack's body, even after immersion in the sea. Or perhaps it was only his dream again.

* * *

Jack roused him sometime during the afternoon rains, helping him lean up far enough to drink the terrible, bitter decoction. 

"Tomorrow, surely," Jack murmured, his hand cool on the nape of Stephen's neck. "Sleep off the fever like a good fellow, and when the boat comes we'll shovel it full of those little rambutans for the crew's Christmas presents. D'you think they'd make a good pudding?" 

Stephen smiled, or tried to. He fell back asleep to the sound of the rain, and the breeze on his cheek from Jack's waving leaf.

* * *

In the dark of night, he woke again to feel Jack lifting him.

"The boat?" he said.

"Not yet," said Jack. He was easing Stephen onto...a bed? Stephen squinted muzzily. A bed of sorts, anyhow. Jack had built a type of sleeping-frame with woven cords of plant fibre in place of bedropes, and then padded it with soft branches and fronds. 

Stephen meant to grumble as Jack settled him onto it—a bed, for all love, what a foolish waste of time. But it took the pressure off his back and hips wonderfully, and let him rest his leg in a comfortable position. And by the time he remembered he'd meant to say something, he was asleep.

* * *

The case proceeded over the next two days as Stephen had expected, with a cyclical rise and fall of the fever, accompanying changes in the pulse, and a slight swelling of the pinned wound. The lower limb was healing rapidly, however, and none of the splinter strikes had broken a bone, so the prognosis was excellent.

He tried mentioning some of this to Jack, who always nodded and smiled and ran off to some new task or other. Fresh rambutan root piled up by Stephen's side of the shelter in truly unnecessary amounts.

Stephen ate rambutan and the only ripe mangosteen to keep Jack happy, and idly sucked on the occasional piece of coconut meat. The richness felt satisfying now, rather than cloying.

Had he been able to get about, or had something to read, he could have imagined himself content. As it was, he passed the time in between feverish dozes by watching Jack, who continued to dash about as if he were preparing the island to face a French warship.

Again Jack did not have the sense to come in out of the rain. In the afternoons, he clambered over the growing signal tower on the beach, adding frameworks and levels like a termite or a wasp. He paid no more heed to the monsoons than he ever had to the great waves battering Surprise's hull.

He returned one sunset, dripping and exuberant as a gigantic hunting dog, and beamed at the scattering of empty rambutan peels, littering the sand like the cast-off shells of giant red spiders.

"Why, there you are, Stephen. Have you had your tonic yet?"

Stephen glowered. Somehow Jack always had a freshly-steeped bowlful of the root pulp ready to hand.

* * *

Stephen dozed only fitfully that night. He came fully awake in the grey light before dawn, and saw Jack crouched on the sand some distance away, laboring over some device or other. Really, this was too much.

"Jack," he called. His voice sounded loud in his ears.

At once Jack was by him, kneeling down. "Are you all right?"

Stephen took hold of Jack's wrist. This close, even without more light, the welts and abrasions along his arms were clear.

"Did you sleep?" Stephen asked. 

"Of course."

"When?"

"Well," Jack said, "since I was a boy I've been trained to stand watch-and-watch if necessary, and that's only a few hours' rest at a time."

"And what is so necessary right at this moment?"

Jack brightened. "Look here." He held up a small, rough-made bow of sorts, the string a plaited cord of plant fibres. 

Stephen stared at the little object, like no proper bow he'd ever seen. "Ah...for...hunting?" 

Jack laughed. "I hope not. You twist it round a stick, you see, and brace the stick like this, and the friction..." He stopped at Stephen's obvious incomprehension. "Something on this island will make a spark, I swear it."

"This island," said Stephen darkly, "is made of damp sponge."

"It'll be much easier with a fire," Jack said, as if Stephen hadn't spoken. "And then maybe I can dive us up some shellfish, cook you a broth to go with your dreadful roots." 

"Surely we'll be back on board before any of that becomes necessary."

"Of course!" Jack's teeth flashed in a smile. "But wouldn't you rather return with a full belly and a healed leg?"

He patted Stephen's shoulder and scooped up his bow and sticks, retreating down the beach to the signal tower without looking back.

* * *

That day was the hottest so far, if Stephen were any judge. He lay still on his makeshift bed, stripped but for his bandages and drawers, limbs flung wide. With wishful thinking, he could imagine the constant humid sweat evaporating, but imagination was all it was.

His bedraggled garments hung along a clothesline that Jack had presumably constructed in half a minute when Stephen wasn't looking. They dangled limply, waiting for a breeze that never came.

Jack appeared and disappeared like a forest spirit, or one of those cloud-shadows that create phantom ships in a bank of fog. He had had no luck grinding a spark out of his little bow and sticks, but now various pieces of wood and threads of tinder were spread in the sun, in the hope that the heat would dry them faster than the soaking-wet air could dampen them. Stephen knew what horse he'd have to bet his money on, unfortunately.

The rains seemed to come earlier that day, and fall more heavily, if that were possible. Jack finally hurried into the shelter, his arms full of wet branches and makeshift tools.

"Can hardly breathe in without a mouthful of water," he said. "Here, let me see to this."

In moments he had Stephen moved from the bedframe, which he began to scrape smooth with one of the shell blades.

Stephen sat up, his wounded leg stretched out before him. "Are you— I beg your pardon, but are you holystoning my bed, Jack Aubrey?"

Jack said airily, his head bent over his task, "Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able. And on the seventh? Holystone the decks and scrape the cable." 

Stephen stared at him.

"Speaking of cable, I should braid fresh cords, too," Jack said. He tugged one of the knots holding the bedropes together.

"Why in God's name should you do that?"

"I made it in a bit of a hurry." He returned to the scraping, in dextrous passes that left the frame-posts creamy smooth and white.

"Jack—" Stephen pressed his lips together, breathing hard through his nose. "Listen, Jack, will you. Even the common sailor has a watch below. They lie in their cramped hammocks and breathe mephitic vapors and sleep like farting hogs. And then they bound up on deck in the morning in a boisterous health I can scarcely understand."

Jack was smiling at his hands, his lovely shell knife. "I remember. Never had a day's illness in my life when I was before the mast."

"The point is," said Stephen waspishly, "that even in that hard time you had your rest. Even the most useless, puny first-voyager wetting his cot and crying for his mother is allowed to sleep."

"I should think so," said Jack. He still smiled, but the jovial tone had an edge to it. "When they're asleep they're out from underfoot, ain't they."

"Would you understand then if I say I would like you out from underfoot?"

"I do understand, Stephen," he said. He gave the bedframe a last scrape and rubbed his palm over it. "There. Now, I'm off to fetch some bark for the bedropes—the rain seems easier."

He leaned to lift him back onto the bed, but Stephen resisted. "Damn your bedropes!" 

There was a pause, in which Jack would not meet his eyes.

"Poor old ropes," he said then, stepping from the shelter into the rain. "Eternal hellfire seems a bit steep."

And he was off like a darting fish, a barracuda, gleaming-wet and single-minded in pursuit of his prey.

Stephen stretched himself out on the mat next to the smooth polished frame, staring up at the branches that made the ceiling. The monsoon pounded on the roof like a giant's wrathful fists.

* * *

Later, in the distance, Stephen saw Jack emerge from the jungle. He carried something with him down to the beach and climbed to the very top of his signal tower, where the palm frond flags had taken a beating.

Although the rain had ended, the air was so hot and thick that to breathe felt like drinking portable soup. Jack worked atop his structure in full sun; Stephen watched him.

Eventually Jack climbed down and approached across the sand, his burden slung on his back, some new braided cord coiled around his arm. He came along briskly, but his good cheer was both practiced and brittle.

"Enough," Stephen said.

"Now, Stephen," said Jack. "Fresh ropes will only take a moment. And the bed makes your leg feel better, you told me so yourself."

"It doesn't need anything more. _I_ don't need anything more. Healthy granulation is knitting the wounds together as we speak. The pins have done their job."

"All the more reason not to let down our guard." Jack stepped into the shelter and crouched by the bedframe, fumbling and dropping what he carried. He looked pale, drenched in sweat, blinking the salt from his eyes.

"Jack! Will you stop?"

Jack's gaze flickered up to his, though only for a chilly moment, and then he went back to his self-appointed task. 

"I see," said Stephen bitterly. "And so we learn that if there is no ship for you to lord over, you must make yourself Captain of the Island."

"Well, and why not," said Jack. "A ship needs a captain." He pulled a knot too hard and broke it, then bent over it with gritted teeth.

"Being Captain, of course you must set the crew to this cruel, everlasting holystoning."

"You don't understand." Jack's eyes looked overbright in his face, set in dark circles. "Holystoning...the point is, no matter what else happens, you do it every day you can. It ain't for show. Nor punishment, neither. It beats back the wear, it fights off the decay. It keeps us afloat. Keeps us alive!"

Stephen leaned toward him intently. "In your realm, perhaps. But Jack... think of my realm. In mine, if you keep on eternally scraping, eventually you hit bone. You have to know when to stop. When to make yourself stop." 

"Oh, I have a long way to go before I hit bone," Jack said in brusque reassurance. 

"And who would know that anatomy best, then? Sea officer, or physician?"

"Stephen, what is this?" Jack chided. "Your fever has made you nervous."

"My fever has gone. I should prescribe a week in the jungle to all my cases."

Jack looked at him searchingly, and smiled truly for the first time in a while. "Gone already? That's good news, ain't it?"

He leaned toward Stephen and laid a big, calloused palm firmly upon his brow.

Stephen started at the touch; he could not help it. Jack's hand was cool—too cool, and clammy, slimy with a running sweat that owed nothing to the humid air. 

Stephen seized his wrist, held the arm still. His fingertips unerringly found a pulse point. Jack tugged against his grip, but in this Stephen would not be balked, and he paid no mind. Instead, he counted.

"You must stop at once," he said. His voice sounded calm, much calmer than the pressure building in his throat.

"Stephen—"

"This is not a request. When was the last time you ate?"

"No one could feel hungry in this boiling heat. Makes a man seasick."

The word seasick sent a stab of fear through Stephen's vitals. "Listen to me. You are on the very verge of collapse. No—" and he held Jack's arm against another pull— "You will listen."

"I am listening," Jack said impatiently, "but I can't see much sense in it. Are you sure your fever is gone? I feel much cooler than you do."

"Yes, precisely!"

But he had no time to enumerate the dangerous symptoms: Jack was already pulling away, his excess cold sweat slicking his arm out of Stephen's grasp. "Try not to worry," he said, and the false cheer was back in his voice.

He was already half a dozen steps away up the beach, the white-hot setting sun blasting his shadow long across the sand, when Stephen broke from his paralysis and seized one of the shelter's poles. With a heave of both arms, he pulled himself up and stood upon his feet. The wounds complained sharply, then settled.

"Jack!" he cried.

Jack stopped, reluctant and frowning. "That leg can't be ready to walk on."

"If you go—"

"I have to go, Stephen." He sounded almost pleading, and cleared his throat, speaking more firmly: "I can manage."

"It is not about your strength of will," said Stephen. "Your strength would keep you working until you dropped dead. And make no mistake, you _will_ drop dead." 

Jack's jaw set stubbornly. Stephen found himself cornered, furious with them both—Jack for his complete unreason, but also Stephen himself for being trapped by his own reason, his comfort and his hiding place. Wishing, with a flush of angry longing, that he could just make Jack understand how he— how it was. 

And somehow, before he knew what he was doing, he heard himself speaking, even as he cringed at the sound like a hunted beast chased from his covert. "You'll die." His voice cracked. "Die and leave me." Stephen took a step forward, but the thigh cramped and he staggered.

At once Jack was there, arms around him. "Sit back down, there's a good fellow."

Stephen held on tightly. Jack's body against his was clammy-cool, twitching in the muscles, the heart and fibres weakening. "Please, Jack."

Something in his tone made Jack hesitate. From that hesitation, Stephen knew this would be the only thing that might work. He shook his head helplessly, leaned to Jack's mouth, and kissed him.

It was not as he had imagined it. And it was not fair. Not for Jack, who made a gruff sound of surprise and then clutched Stephen to him as if by reflex; certainly not for Stephen, who was skinning his own heart with a sliver of shell to try to save Jack from himself. 

He kissed him again and again, asking him silently, please. Please.

Jack finally rested his mouth against Stephen's cheek, panting for breath. He said nothing, only held Stephen against him, taking weight from the wounded leg.

"Come with me," Stephen said into his ear.

"Where," said Jack. He sounded dazed.

"The sea." And as Jack's mouth began to move on his skin, maybe to refuse or to question, Stephen pushed him back far enough to see his face. He went on sternly, "Not to fish, and not to dive for more shell. If this were my surgery, I would prescribe Currie's method, the cold seawater affusion. Buckets of the stuff. But I have neither surgery nor orderlies."

"Nor buckets." Jack managed the ghost of a smile. 

"Come with me."

He could see, could even feel, how much of Jack still resisted. Work was life, striving was hope, and to stop moving forward was to die. But Stephen met his gaze and waited for him, bringing this strange, remorseless power of affection to bear. Forcing Jack to let go of the very occupations keeping his heart alive, to trust that Stephen could carry that heart safely in his hands.

Jack cast his eyes down, but his grasp on Stephen tightened, and Stephen knew he had him for the moment. He led Jack slowly toward the sea; Jack supported him on the bad side. 

As instructed, Jack shed his disreputable breeches at the water's edge. Then without instruction of any kind, except for the flush upon Stephen's face, he knelt and drew off the last of Stephen's linen. He eased the drawers over the bandages so deftly that Stephen scarcely felt it.

* * *

The water was not as cold as the technique of seawater affusion would dictate in the best of circumstances. But once they had waded out where the surface touched Stephen's collarbone, it was certainly cooler than the air, occasionally swirling even brisker currents up from shadowy depths beyond.

He eased Jack onto his back and held him there, floating, the water lapping him head to foot. Jack's pulse still fluttered, too weak, too slow.

"I am on watch," Stephen said. "I shall tell you when I see the ship."

Jack stirred, but said nothing.

"You may as well resign yourself," Stephen added, reaching for lightness. "I am your physician, Captain Aubrey, and will not release you from treatment until I deem it appropriate. I will not be responsible for—"

"No," Jack said. "I am responsible. None of this is your doing."

"You make me sound quite the passenger," said Stephen. 

"I am responsible," repeated Jack, calm and steady, as if he were a prisoner giving his bona fides to a French officer. "You called me Captain of the Island and so I am. The captain is responsible for the state of the ship and all aboard her."

"And for himself?"

Jack let out a heavy breath. "I am responsible for bringing this on us both. I told that foolish story."

"Which foolish story in particular?" Stephen asked, and was rewarded with a passing flicker of a smile around Jack's eyes but nothing more. 

And so Stephen let the silence spin out, thinking. He braced himself against the tide. This was excellent for his leg, lifting most of gravity's pull from it while still allowing him to use it naturally. He must remember it for his future patients. Should there ever be any. 

"You don't mean about that quartermaster struck by a ranging shot?" he asked at last. It felt like years ago. 

"The Finn," said Jack.

"The man couldn't help being from Finland, Jack. I hear it happens to many people. And don't tell me that you've tumbled so far down into your infernal superstitions that it's bad luck even to speak of a Finn, let alone actually to sail with one."

"You don't understand."

"I certainly understand that you seem to think you summoned a cannonball by the dubious power of your repartee alone."

But Jack did not rise to the bait. He clenched his eyes shut as if his head ached. Stephen finally understood just why Jyrki the new carpenter's mate had insisted on changing his name to Erik and telling the crew he was a Swede from a long line of Swedes. Stephen, who had only learned the truth from the boy's bout of feverish delirium, certainly would never tell.

" _Surprise_ has been hit by many a shot," he said, trying again. "I have not heard that each one waited for you to invite it in."

"Lightning does not hit a man every time it strikes," said Jack, opening his eyes. "And yet it is foolish to run outside in a storm waving an iron rod." For a moment, he almost sounded like himself, in one of their philosophical sparring matches over a late-night bottle. 

"We will have to disagree on the electrical properties of the Finn." Stephen trickled water through his fingers over Jack's throat, to cool the great veins there. "And if anyone called down the lightning, was it not I? Who forced you to admit that the Frenchman had teeth and could bite?"

"Nonsense," said Jack. 

They argued a bit more over who said what, and who should have known better, as the sun finished setting. Stephen knew that superstition, certainly Jack's lifelong naval superstition, was not amenable to reasonable discussion. And yet every time, he had to try. 

He did not think about how it had felt to have Jack's mouth on his.

* * *

Darkness brought stars, and a sliver of moon, and a slight cooling of the water along the sea bed at his feet. The extremity of the day's heat faded at last. Stephen imagined he might even have felt a breeze now and then.

"Will you sleep?" Stephen said after a time. "You need not fear sinking. And I told you, it is my watch."

"No thank you." Seldom had Jack sounded so low. 

"I have known you to fall asleep standing up, between movements of a duet. And never drop your violin."

He supposed he had meant that in a chiding way. Maybe somehow it sounded different, for Jack's hand found his, and pressed hard.

Stephen had no answer but to hold on. 

"I'm sorry," Jack said.

"Whatever for?"

"I—" he began, then stopped, and splashed ungracefully upright and to his feet.

Stephen gripped his hand, expecting him to pull away, to run back to his frantic work and soon to his death. But Jack only studied him closely in the dark.

"Shall I tell you something, Stephen."

"If you please."

Jack's fingers worked in his; he drew a breath but let it out without speaking. Then he leaned close to Stephen and kissed him. 

Perhaps Stephen should have resisted. But, he thought, with everything taken from him but his dream, who could blame him for opening his arms to it?

And so he held Jack's face in his hands, stubbled whiskers wet and rough beneath his fingers. Their mouths fit as if this were the twelfth time, the twentieth, or two-hundredth; as if every night of music and friendship had ended this way. 

The difference, he supposed, was Jack's taut urgency. After a duet, he was always warm and glowing, languid, as Stephen had guiltily imagined he might be after love. He had seen Stephen off to bed with heavy-lidded eyes and a smoldering curl of a smile, which had often followed Stephen into sleep.

But now, Jack's nimble musician's hands were clumsy, his breath hitching. He would hesitate, pulling back far enough for their gazes to meet, Jack's eyes glittering in the near-dark—and then the moment would pass and he would draw Stephen against him with a muffled sound in his throat. He burned somewhere inside like a furnace, restless and unreachable.

Stephen found himself stroking Jack's powerful shoulders, the muscles along his spine, over and over; he drew the palms of his hands along Jack's skin as if he could leach out the heat beneath the way the seawater did. 

When Jack strained against him, caressing him under the water, Stephen murmured long into his ear. He knew Jack did not understand Catalan. That, perhaps, was why he was able to do so.

* * *

They stood unsteadily together for a time, their brows touching. As their breath subsided, Stephen wrapped his fingers around Jack's wrist, and counted. 

At last, he knew the ocean had finished its work. Stephen could feel that Jack's body had righted itself from the inside: his heartbeat strong and clearly defined, the quiver gone from his muscles. 

"The dizziness has abated?" he asked, brushing Jack's wet hair out of his face. "And the seasick feeling?"

"How did you know?"

"You are not as opaque as you might think."

Jack regarded him with a strange uneasiness.

They waded to shore and back to the shelter. Stephen leaned on Jack to walk, although he noticed with some interest that the sea had also eased the swelling in his wound. 

Jack obediently drank down a mixture of fresh and salt water, and they shared a mango. Then, for the first time since Stephen woke on this little island with the memory of Jack breathing him to life, Jack actually lay down with him.

He still seemed unsettled, shifting about, moving closer. The roof blocked out much of the starlight; Jack was barely a shadow, a warm shape with the scent of the salt sea. Stephen reached out to him, brushed his shoulder and his neck, and as if he had been waiting, Jack surged at once back into Stephen's hold. He kissed as if he were still desperately thirsty for something.

Stephen hushed him and held him, and when Jack rolled upon his back and pulled Stephen bodily atop him, he allowed it. Jack being Jack, he was tremendously careful of Stephen's leg—far too careful, in fact, until Stephen bit him in a tender place and insisted he forget. They rutted against each other, damp now with sweat. Jack made a sound as he spent, falling and melancholy, like the low, trailing note of a coda. 

As so often with Jack, Stephen was right there with his part of the impromptu. And as he finally rolled aside, he knew that Jack would turn with him, and his hand was already there to tuck Jack's head down against his shoulder. Jack clung to him. 

After a long time he said again, on a deep breath, "Shall I...shall I tell you something, Stephen?"

"Yes." Stephen rested two fingers on the pulse point at Jack's throat, then kissed him there, lingeringly. 

The quiet left space for Jack, who said at last, "They may not be coming for us after all."

Of course part of Stephen had known it. With all of Jack's "oh, tonight certainly" and "tomorrow, Stephen" and chatter about the ship's impending Christmas plans, he had let himself be lulled. And why not? They had enough trouble on hand as it was. Facing the truth meant understanding that the _Surprise_ had lost her battle, been captured or sunk, or had been searching elsewhere this whole time and regretfully declared them lost.

But to hear Jack himself admit this—Jack, who had carried entire crews on his back, keeping their hopes alight with only the force of his own inextinguishable determination. Jack, who believed that what you said aloud, you called down like a lightning strike.

"I know," Stephen said, and stroked Jack's brow. "You are good to tell me."

He felt a stab of loss that he would never admit, not by word or deed. Jack had to let that burden go, at least for the moment, so that he could stay alive. But Stephen had leaned upon it, something to believe in when his own fear and pain had made everything else uncertain. Jack had given him that belief, had crafted it with his own life force—Stephen regretted losing it, though he was grateful he had ever had it at all. 

And of course he knew why Jack had done it. He remembered a time when Jack, sooty and half-deaf from an ongoing battle, had looked up at him from the makeshift operating table. Jack's face, dazed and trusting, had said silently and clear as day, _You will save me._ Knowing to his marrow, _needing_ to know, that the physician could cure all, the way that Stephen needed to unhesitatingly cast his life into the hands of the captain who would always, always bring the ship through the storm. Each was bulwark for the other.

Jack sighed. The admission seemed to have lightened him somehow, as if he had spat up some old poison. Now he lay easy in Stephen's arms, as easily as he had floated upon the sea, resting in his native element. 

"We will do all we can," Stephen said. "Which first is this." He touched each of Jack's eyelids in turn. And Jack, for a wonder, closed his eyes and kept them closed. Soon, he slept.

Stephen watched him. For a time, he even fanned him with Jack's own leaf. And then in the deepest hour of the night, when a rare breeze picked up from the sea, he slept beside him.

* * *

Stephen woke alone, yawning and comfortable. The wound progressed satisfactorily; one of the pins was in fact ready to come out, and he pulled it between finger and thumb with no renewal of blood. 

A whistle alerted him to Jack, strolling toward him along the tide-line as he had done so many of these mornings. His breeches at this point were more of a gesture than a garment. But even before Stephen could properly scowl, Jack was calling out with a beaming smile, "Merry Christmas! No work, no work, I promise!"

"A merry Christmas to you," Stephen said, looking him over suspiciously.

"No, Stephen, honestly, I've been very good." Jack peeled a rambutan and offered it to him. "Now wash and brush up, will you, so I may show you what Father Christmas brought."

Stephen drank some water, rubbed wet hands over his face, and considered himself as brushed-up as he was likely to get. Jack shook his head, but burrowed into the sand and retrieved a long wooden object, which he handed over.

It was a simple crutch, well-made for Stephen's height and bearing. Stephen, grateful and exasperated at once, said, "Jack..."

"Oh, that's not your present," Jack said airily. "Come along."

He held Stephen's elbow even while Stephen adapted quickly to use of the crutch; in this nursemaiding fashion he led Stephen inland. Paths of Jack's general height and breadth were punched through the underbrush in several directions, and already worn down noticeably by prints the size of his feet. It was like an anthill or a rabbit warren, occupied by one busy creature alone.

Stephen, curious and irritated together, followed Jack through the maze. "So this is what you do with your day of rest," he said as he hopped over a stump heavy with mossy growth.

Jack did not look one bit abashed. "Just a little further."

They emerged into a small clearing, where he ushered Stephen with unnecessary coddling onto a bare patch already scraped from the earth. Jack theatrically laid a finger across his lips and sat down crosslegged, gazing up into the tangled trees.

Stephen waited with a poor show of patience. At least it was shady here.

Then all at once, a flash of colour, glittering bright. And Jack's warm whisper against his ear: "It comes here about this time every day."

Edging out on a branch was a bird. And not just any bird—it was nothing Stephen had seen before, and nothing he had ever imagined he would see.

It was plump, robust, well over a foot tall. Its breast glowed warm russet from the throat all the way down—and more, its back and wings veritably glittered with a blue-green carapace as if melted gems had been poured upon it. Its eyes, great and round, gleamed golden in a red-skinned mask.

Stephen stared. It hopped further along the branch, which swayed under its weight. With calm curiosity, it stared back down at Stephen, tipping its head side to side, lifting its chin, curving its neck. 

After some unknown amount of time, he heard again in his ear the barest whisper: "Happy Christmas, old Stephen." 

But he could not move. He only sat, his mind awhirl, comparing and discarding avian morphologies. When the bird grew tired of him and disappeared into the thick foliage with a sinuous twist of its long shining tail, Stephen still sat agape. And a slightly smaller bird came back for a time, swaying amiably upon a lower branch with a centipede in its mouth, so that Stephen could see its knobby grey feet and the russet at the tips of its tailfeathers. 

With no ink nor paper nor charcoal, no way to draw or paint it, and no way yet to collect a proper specimen, Stephen could only look long and remember. He lost himself. All he could think of were the colours, the shapes, the way it moved. And even in the midst of this, he laughed. This strange new bird was Jack taken to the air: stocky and bold, a daring bright eye, shining with gold lace. 

The images of both bird and man were still before him much later, when Jack's shadow stooped over him in the empty clearing. "I hope you liked it," he said, smiling.

Stephen let himself be helped up, still speechless.

"You shouldn't sit there now that the sun is right overhead," said Jack in smug reproof. "Come back into the shade."

He blithely ignored Stephen's exasperated gaze as they made their way to the shelter. Stephen did notice, however, that Jack had woven a shade screen for the seat at the top of his signal tower.

* * *

That night, Stephen said against Jack's temple, "Thank you."

"Hmm?" Jack said with sleepy warmth.

"Thank you for my bird."

Jack squeezed him tight, nearly knocking the breath from him.

"I'm only sorry I had no gift for you," Stephen said once he had recovered.

At this, Jack raised his head. The last of the moon was gone, but this close Stephen could still see his eyes. "Yes, you did."

* * *

Stephen had one more long morning in his clearing. Climbing to his feet at noon, leaning on his crutch, he heard the crisp retort of a signal gun. And as he hurriedly approached the beach, he could already hear a distant, full-throated roar, full of chaos and ferocity and joy. 

No French passerby. That was the voice of _Surprise_.

* * *

Stephen and Jack dined in the great cabin, washed and shaved and uniformed, with all the officers Jack could fit at table; poor Mowett was on duty, but Jack made sure to send him regular titbits and cheerful wishes. The ship heeled to one side as she hurried on her way. This patched and injured, and low on everything from shot to cordage to purser's slops, it was imperative she rendezvous with the fleet before anyone else found her.

Courses of the belated Christmas meal kept popping in, each platter carried by a different seaman. Stephen could hear them elbowing each other in the corridor for the privilege. Each one who showed up, scuffed or limping or scantily bandaged, brought a new depth and shine to Jack's proud eye. He greeted them all by name, asked after their wounds, hoped they'd be ready for the choir concert. 

Their Christmas dinner was a thing of shreds and patches at best: sardines on toast with no toast; mince pies made of weevily remnants of flour and salt beef from the bottom of the cask; fragments of cheese pared from the very last of the dry rind. The claret could never be kept cool in this climate, and was slowly coming to resemble its cousin vinegar. 

Stephen watched Jack over the rim of his glass. He ate heartily, laughing with his fellows, making it a feast and a holiday with his mere presence. He shone in the candlelight sleek and gleaming like Stephen's bird.

"Gentlemen!" cried Jack, weaving happily upright. "I give you Lieutenant Pullings! Savior of _Surprise_ , rescuer of lost souls."

Chairs scraped as the guests leapt to their feet—the smaller midshipman supported by his senior—and they echoed in enthusiastic tumult, "Hear him!" "Lieutenant Pullings!" and such things. Tom flushed, his scar standing out in livid contrast. 

"Sir," said he, standing very straight. "If I may be permitted... I give you all Captain Aubrey and Doctor Maturin. Their safe return makes this a very merry Christmas indeed."

There followed much shouting and drinking and thumping of the table. Jack and Stephen, who could not drink by the rules of the toast, met each other's eyes. Jack was already ruddy with wine, so further blushing was impossible, but he tapped Stephen's foot with his own under the table. Stephen gave him a secret smile.

Killick entered with his mate Black Bill, and between them they carried a board decorated with garlands of what looked to be seaweed, the Indian Ocean lacking in holly. In the center of the board reigned a cylindrical object, pallid and glutinous, faintly shining. 

Of course Jack's face lit up like a signal firework. "Pudding! Stephen, d'you see! Killick, you're a wonder, however did you manage it?"

"Which it weren't easy, your honour," said Killick complacently.

"First slice for Mr. Mowett," Jack commanded. "Where's the brandy? Have we any left in the locker?"

The tiniest splash of the remaining cognac was sprinkled upon the pudding and set afire; it flashed faint blue and went out. Everyone cheered.

Once Mowett's serving had been sent up, Killick served Jack, and pieces went round the rest of the table. Stephen allowed Bill to carve him a very small slice, in the spirit of the holiday.

* * *

The guests eventually staggered away, with, Stephen was surprised and glad to see, the little midshipman still technically upon his own feet. Despite their appetites, they had all tacitly refrained from finishing the last of the bedraggled pudding, surely in honour of their beloved Captain. 

Jack worked over another slice, wielding knife and fork like a trencherman. And when he finished, his gaze stole sidelong to Stephen's plate.

"I should not allow it," said Stephen. "I would not like your last appearance in the Naval Chronicle to read 'Slain By Spotted Dog'."

"It's such a small piece, Stephen," Jack said, and hiccuped. "Just the heel of the loaf."

Stephen sighed and slid the plate toward him. "Merry Christmas."

Knife and fork swung into action, then hesitated. "You're sure you don't want it?"

"Oh," said Stephen, "quite sure."

"Amazing," muttered Jack between bites. "And even a few raisins! Thought we ran out weeks ago. Killick and Bill must have defended them with their lives."

Stephen felt far too sure that some of the raisins might have been rat droppings; in the candlelight they looked much the same. But then, Jack had been fed—if that were the right word—by the Navy for many years, man and boy, and he was no stranger to the verminous oddities of the cuisine. 

"Well," said Jack at last, leaning back in his chair, replete. "Not the Christmas I feared we'd have."

"Nor I," said Stephen. "But in the end I did enjoy both of them."

Jack smiled rather shyly. "I'm just sorry you couldn't bring one of your birds away with you."

Stephen rose and limped to the stern locker, where lay the single blue-green feather he had managed to find before they were hurried aboard. It gleamed in the amber light like a precious jewel. "I will correspond with colleagues. Surely one of them will find it again."

"What would you have named it?" Jack came up behind him, moving easily with the tilt of the deck. "Reminded me a bit of a yam. The shape, not the colours."

"A yam, indeed." Stephen scoffed. "Perhaps I would name it after you."

"Now, Stephen, you can't go around naming everything after me."

"Can't I?"

He felt Jack's hand stroking gently across the small of his back, and he leaned against it. Jack said, "Doubt the scientific establishment would care for it. Flocks of Aubreybirds waddling around."

They smiled at each other, about this, and much more than this. Killick entered with their coffee, and they set to deciding which duet was best to play for Christmas.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Stephen's bird: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aaTHiv0SwM>
> 
> The chestnut-breasted malkoha doesn't get discovered for a few more years; I figure Stephen eventually tips off George Shaw, who goes to Java and officially finds it.
> 
> Many grateful thanks to sakana17 and klia for beta! (And klia's thoughts on birds, always.)


End file.
